Читать книгу A Buddhist Bible. The Essential Scriptures of the Zen Buddhism онлайн

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To illustrate this free use of Tao by the Ch’an Masters, let me quote a strictly Buddhist production written by Rinsai which is much admired even down to today. It was given to me by my own Master as part of his instruction.

"Buddha-nature is the symbol of purity; Dharma-mind is the symbol of enlightenment; The Tao is the Way of unobstructed truth. In essence these three are truly One, But by themselves they are merely words. The mind of the Tao-man should be pure, enlightened and free."

Originally Laotsu had a conception of the value of mind-concentration as an intuitive method of arriving at a self-realisation of reality, but in Taoism it had become buried under a burden of self-induced trance and vision and revelation as a guide for the attainment of success and good luck. Nevertheless, there was an underlying similarity or affinity between the conceptions of the value of concentration of mind in both Buddhism and Taoism.

When Buddhism came to China it most decidedly had to make terms with Taoism, for while Confucianism was the cult of the literati, Taoism was the faith of the common people. Taoism was indigenous and while the teachings of Laotsu had been atheistic and sensible, in the course of a thousand years Taoism had taken up into itself the crude animism of a great racial inheritance to make it most decidedly spiritistic and superstitious and geomantic.